I have an old iMac with 10.3.9 on it. It has 1 GB of ram, 55 GB hard drive space etc, G3 processor. I would like to install OS 10.4 Tiger on it but I noticed it said that you need built in FireWire. This iMac does not have built in FireWire so would I still be able to upgrade this iMac to 10.4? Is the built in FireWire a recommendation or requirement?

Or if you only have the DVD installer, pull the hard drive, put it into a machine that has a DVD drive, install it there, then move the hard drive back to the iMac.

Which iMac is it exactly? What is the serial number of the machine from Apple System Profiler, or on the data tag on the bottom of the machine I think. Knowing that would make it easier to determine the caveats of what you want to experiment with.

Macs before and including the 17 inch flat panel iMac (about mid-2002) could boot up under OS 9, and Macs including and after the Power Mac G3 (blue & white) (early 1999) could run Mac OS X, and can probably be upgraded to 10.4.11.

But I also recommended that you download the Mactracker application at www.mactracker.ca to check out your specific model.

Later, in response to a question from John Rougeux, I think you confirmed that your model is probably an iMac G3/350. John provided a link to everymac.com .If you scroll down to "Pre-Installed MacOS" and look to the right at "Maximum MacOS" you will see 10.3.9Before you purchase 10.4 or attempt to upgrade, please do this:[1] Download www.mactracker.ca.[2] In Mac OS X , open System Profiler from Applications -> Utilities. Check your Model Identifier.[3] Open Mactracker.app and search for the string from Model Identifier.[4] The field Maximum Mac OS should tell you how far you can upgrade.

For example, if your Model Identifier is PowerMac 2,1 and you have the 350 MHz (non-Firewire) model, the maximum Mac OS you can install normally is 10.3.9. If your have the 400 MHz model with FireWire, then you can install 10.4.11.

Because you may be on the edge, please check this out before you spend money or attempt an upgrade.

Good luck.

_________________________Who serves his fellows, is of his fellows greatest - Chingachgook (by legend)Scout

He said in an earlier post he is new to the Mac and just wants to experiment with it so I gave him his options One can't really go by Apple specs for maximum OS. I have installed Tiger on many iMacs that Apple said 10.3.9 was max. I always have used the method of taking the HD out of the iMac and installing 10.4 from a compatible machine. Tiger on a tray loading iMac ran slow so I put Panther back on, but it ran.

I put Leopard on a 533 Mhz G4 by installing on another machine then putting the HD back into the 533, it ran fine. Apple puts out those specs because sometimes there are limitations on certain applications due to hardware, mainly video stuff. For example on some machines DVD player wouldn't run. I think it was because DVD Player used Core Graphics in Leopard instead of QuickDraw so some video cards couldn't run it.

I didn't see your reply there when I started. Did I really work on that for 30 minutes?

When we found out which machine he has through John's question, I began to look at the specs, and I became concerned that the RAM and HD size would need to be significantly upgraded to accommodate 10.4 plus Classic. Even at that the system might feel like walking through molasses on a 350 MHz G3. That was my experience on a beige G3, but I was willingly putting money and time into it for the benefit of the adventure. (It was a bear to maintain too - 10.3.x, I think. What was that app that let you do the non-standard install? Can't remember.) Since I didn't want to go into non-standard installs, I was being careful not to lead him on. But you were already there!

Well, James it's all laid out for you now, so you can make an informed decision on how adventurous you want to be - which is good. (Reboot is a power user around here, in case you haven't figured that out.) Let us know how it goes.

Cheers.

_________________________Who serves his fellows, is of his fellows greatest - Chingachgook (by legend)Scout

Even at that the system might feel like walking through molasses on a 350 MHz G3. That was my experience on a beige G3, but I was willingly putting money and time into it for the benefit of the adventure.Cheers.

Thanks for the props but I'm just a guy that spends way too much time around and in front of computers.

10.4 wasn't bad on a slot loading iMac, very useable, I found it quicker than 10.3. On a tray loader though the need for a decent graphics card made the tray loaders definitely much slower on 10.4 as compared to 10.3 The beige G3's and tray loading iMacs had a 66Mhz bus as compared to the 100 Mhz of the SL iMac, and the SL iMac had a huge 8 M graphics card, as compared to the stock 2 M graphics on the beige and tray loading . Those 2 things made a huge difference.

I believe that the system requirements listed by Apple are there to keep some folks from complaining that the system is deadly slow on older machines with small RAM, etc. You know they would complain, too.

I believe that the system requirements listed by Apple are there to keep some folks from complaining that the system is deadly slow on older machines with small RAM, etc. You know they would complain, too.

Who would do a thing like that? Surely not you or I.

I was wondering if the Firewire requirement is basically to allow booting from a larger external HD. Mac OS X has a significant footprint compared with those older internal HDs.

_________________________Who serves his fellows, is of his fellows greatest - Chingachgook (by legend)Scout

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